Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism in Africa
Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism in AfricaDate | 20 July 2026
Tomorrow (21 July), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is expected to convene its virtual 1354th ministerial-level meeting on ‘Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism in Africa’.
The Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uganda and Chairperson of the PSC for July, Haruna Kyeyune Kasolo, will deliver opening remarks, followed by introductory remarks by Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, Chairperson of the AU Commission. The AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), Bankole Adeoye, and a representative of the United Nations (UN) will also deliver statements.
Tomorrow’s session will build on and follows the PSC’s 1266th meeting of March 2025 on ‘Deradicalisation as a Leverage for the Fight against Violent Extremism in Africa’ expressed grave concern over increased terrorist activity and the return or relocation of foreign terrorist fighters, highlighted structural drivers of radicalisation and called for counter-radicalisation measures to be incorporated into the AU action plan on preventing and combating terrorism and violent extremism. It also offers an opportunity to follow up on the PSC’s 1111th meeting of October 2022, which emphasised national reconciliation and social cohesion, including dialogue and negotiation to facilitate voluntary surrender and rehabilitation, and requested the AU Commission to develop a compendium of African best practices.
The session is expected to assess recent trends and whether and how to adapt the mobilisation of effective response to the threat that terrorism continues to pose in various parts of the continent.
The more consequential test is whether the Council identifies practical follow-up measures. The AU does not lack frameworks. Its architecture includes the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism (1999), its Protocol (2004), and the Malabo Declaration on Terrorism and Unconstitutional Changes of Government (2022). These are the Nouakchott Process, the AU Counter-Terrorism Centre (AUCTC), AFRIPOL, CISSA and the Djibouti Process (2015). The gap lies in implementation, coordination, institutional follow-through, and the political and socio-economic governance deficit-based diagnosis for anchoring responses.
Related to implementation and in terms of response, two issues stand out for tomorrow’s PSC session. The first relates to the impact of major power geopolitical rivalry, such as the rivalry between Russia and France in the Sahel, on regional and continental strategy for countering terrorism and violent extremism. The second concerns the state of political cohesion at the regional and continental levels for advancing an effective strategy for countering terrorism and violent extremism.
As a 2022 special research report observed, policy has remained disproportionately security-centred despite the political, governance, socioeconomic and environmental dimensions of the threat, particularly in marginalised territories with weak state–society relations, deficient local governance and absence of service delivery. Tomorrow’s session may therefore steer the PSC towards an implementation-oriented roadmap that combines the provision of capable and legitimate security institutions along with the consolidation of legitimate local governance, the delivery of essential services, development, and community-centred prevention and stabilization measures. The 13th Africa Security Symposium, held in Accra from 7 to 9 July 2026, similarly underscored African-led solutions, inclusive partnerships, practical cross-border cooperation and translating diagnosis into action.
The first substantive issue for tomorrow’s session is the geography of terrorism in Africa. According to GTI 2026, despite a 28% global decline in terrorism deaths in 2025, Africa remained the principal geographic concentration of terrorism-related deaths and highly affected countries. Six of the ten countries most affected by terrorism worldwide were in the region. The Sahel alone accounted for more than half of global terrorism deaths, compared with less than 1% in 2007, while four African countries were among the five states that together accounted for 70% of global fatalities.
This persistence of the threat of terrorism nevertheless coexists with uneven and, in some respects, improving regional trends. Across much of Africa, terrorism deaths fell by 23.5% and incidents by nearly 28%. Eighteen countries improved their overall GTI scores, while only four deteriorated. These aggregate declines may, however, obscure the consolidation of territorial influence by some groups, such as through imposing economic blockades.
Thus, it is of particular significance for tomorrow’s session that account is given to recent developments illustrating terrorism’s regionalised and adaptive geography across the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, coastal West Africa and Somalia. In Mali, coordinated attacks on 25 April struck Kati and several other locations, including Bamako, Gao, Kidal and Sévaré. The attacks also killed Defence Minister Sadio Camara when assailants targeted his residence in Kati. In Niger, the January IS-claimed attack on the airbase at Diori Hamani International Airport, the April spillover of fighting between JNIM and IS into Tillabéri, and the June attack on the airport and adjoining military airbase, which killed 11 security personnel and two civilians, demonstrated growing pressure on strategic infrastructure and centres of power. Chad’s Lake Chad region similarly illustrated Boko Haram’s continuing lethality. The May attack on the Barka Tolorom military base killed at least 23 soldiers and wounded 26, followed two days later by an ambush that killed two Chadian generals. Further analyses (here and here) point to the consolidation of jihadist activity across the Benin–Niger–Nigeria borderlands and the southward expansion of Sahel-based groups towards coastal West Africa.
In the Horn of Africa, the UN Panel identifies al-Shabaab as the most immediate threat to peace, security and stability in Somalia and the wider region, highlighted by its activities during 2025. Apart from the 18 March 2025 attempted assassination of the Somali President near the presidential palace, in the first quarter of 2025, the group’s monthly attacks increased by about 50% compared with 2024 in areas such as Hiraan and Middle Shabelle. It also averaged around six attacks per month in Kenya, while the estimated number of Ethiopian fighters within its ranks rose to approximately 600, highlighting the increasing regionalisation of the group’s reach.
The other issue that is also expected to feature in tomorrow’s session is how terrorist groups are increasingly leveraging advanced technologies to mobilise support, recruit, undertake reconnaissance operations and increasingly carry out attacks. Terrorist groups such as al-Shabaab and ISWAP have leveraged the digital era by utilising a variety of tools and platforms to plan, communicate, and organise their operations. Some terrorist groups, for example, as highlighted in relation to the Lake Chad Basin region, Boko haram, have sought to use drone technology for surveillance and weapon delivery. The ISWAP, for instance, increased its use of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIED). In the Sahel too, drone use has increased in 2025. JNIM has conducted repeated drone-enabled attacks across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo in 2025, often coordinating drone use with ground assaults. Attention should also be paid to the risk that such actors may employ cyber warfare tactics to disrupt crucial infrastructure and communication networks.
Another issue that tomorrow’s session is expected to address relates to the terrorism–transnational crime nexus. Terrorist groups sustain their operations through illicit taxation, smuggling, kidnapping, illegal mining, livestock theft, fuel trafficking and protection economies. It is worth recalling that the PSC’s 1345th meeting warned of an ‘integrated, hybrid and transnational criminal ecosystem’ in which terrorism, trafficking, environmental crime, cybercrime and financial crime share corridors, financing mechanisms and logistics.’ The 2026 UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) report frames the relationship as a continuum from transactional cooperation and coexistence to, more rarely, organisational convergence. Among the terrorist groups operating in West Africa, the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (JNIM), the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) are known for taking advantage of transnational criminal networks, including for financing their activities and the recruitment of new members.
Counter-terrorism cannot therefore be effective without addressing the economic factors that enable and sustain terrorist groups, including arms trafficking, illicit financial flows and illicit natural resource extraction. The analytical report accompanying the PSC’s 1320th meeting similarly presents terrorism and violent extremism as interconnected threats sustained by illicit economies, digital recruitment, cross-border financing and governance gaps. The resulting communiqué placed greater emphasis on institutional coordination, early warning and early action.
The prevention dimension should focus on conditions that enable recruitment rather than on treating radicalisation as predominantly ideological. UNDP’s ‘Journey to Extremism’ study shows that recruitment in sub-Saharan Africa is shaped by economic hardship, limited opportunities, fractured state–society relations and security-force abuses rather than religion alone. 17 % of voluntary recruits cited religious ideas as their primary motivation, while 25% identified employment opportunities. Among the 48% who experienced a specific tipping-point event, 71% cited government action, including the killing or arrest of family members or friends. These findings echo Amani Africa’s aforementioned assessment that terrorism has often been misdiagnosed primarily as a security threat, producing excessive reliance on militarised responses despite the political, governance and development conditions sustaining it. Strengthening state legitimacy, accountable governance, socioeconomic development and community resilience should therefore be treated as central components of a sustainable counter-terrorism strategy.
The expected outcome of the session is a communiqué. The PSC is expected to express its concern over the continuing scourge of terrorism and violent extremism, particularly in the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, coastal West Africa and the Horn of Africa. It may also express concern over their growing convergence with illicit economies, transnational organised crime, and the use of new technologies, including digital and drones. It may underscore the importance of adopting a comprehensive and multidimensional counter-terrorism strategy that combines security measures undertaken by legitimate security institutions with prevention, deradicalisation, stabilisation, recovery, reconciliation, dialogue, service delivery, and the building of legitimate local governance infrastructure. The PSC may also emphasise the need for member states to put aside their difference when it comes to the mobilisation of collective action to address the scourge of terrorism and violent extremism. In this respect, it may emphasise the need for AU, ECOWAS and UN to join ranks in support of the counter-terrorism efforts of the Sahel countries that are the major theatre of terrorist activities on the continent, with a growing threat of expansion into coastal West Africa. It may also call for strengthened coordination among the AU Commission, AUCTC, AFRIPOL, CISSA, RECs/RMs and relevant regional mechanisms, particularly in advancing intelligence-sharing, border management, and investigations into terrorist financing. Furthermore, the PSC may call on the AU Commission to develop an implementation-oriented roadmap identifying priority borderlands, practical channels for operational cooperation, support for national and regional deradicalisation programmes, and stronger linkages between counter-terrorism operations, civilian protection, stabilisation and recovery.